“Hey Father, what else do you do during the week?” Is a question I get often; after all, most people only see me for an hour on Sunday and might not get a sense for what the other 167 hours of the week look like. It’s a good question to ask, and one of the things I try to be mindful of is what do my parishioners’ other 167 hours look like?
It’s an important question to ask because that one hour a lot of people spend at Church, what does it mean for the rest of the week? What difference does it make? How can my life be changed by one hour?
These questions get at the heart of why God has desired us to be with Him on Sundays and what liturgy means for us in general. It’s not so much that we take a break from the “real world” and spend an hour at Church, nor that we take 167-hour break from Heaven and go back to real life – but rather, some mix of the two: what I do during the week has an impact on how I worship God, and how I worship God has an impact upon how the week will be.
Enter, Liturgical Living, aka Catholic stuff to answer the “so what?” of what all this Catholic worship stuff means for me. For example, we have different seasons – Lent, Advent, Easter, Christmas, and “boring, ole’” ordinary time (lol!) – but what do they mean, and what impact can they have on my life? Or the fact that at a certain Mass we’ll celebrate St. Francis of Assisi or St. Therese of Lisieux – so what?
This series is meant to allow the wonder, glory, and awe of our Catholic liturgical life to seep through into all areas of our life; for our rich and profound liturgical tradition to make a difference for us.
Y’all take care, and God bless,
Fr. Michael